Tens of thousands of ballots cast in Arizona’s 2012
election were rejected by elections officials, indicating continued
communication and voter education problems in the state, according to an
AZCIR analysis of rejected ballots and interviews with elections
experts and legislators.

Nearly 46,000 of the more than 2.3 million ballots cast in Arizona’s
2012 election – or about 2 percent – were rejected. That rate is down
from 2.2 percent in 2008, when Arizona led the nation in rejected
provisional ballots.

The rejected votes consist of early voting or provisional ballots in
which voters went through the voting process but later had their ballots
thrown out after review by elections officials. The most common reasons
were that voters weren’t registered in time for the election, voted in
the wrong precincts or didn’t sign their ballots.

Early votes and absentee ballots are cast when a voter is on the
permanent early voting list or lives outside the state or country during
election cycles. Provisional ballots are cast when voters are not
listed on a jurisdiction’s voter roll or registration records, or if
they received an early ballot.

Election experts say rejected ballot rates – and the reasons for
rejection – can point to either poor voter education about Arizona’s
election process or inefficiencies in the state’s election
administration efforts.

“I know that [Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett] wants to
identify areas that we can do better and will do better,” said Matt
Roberts, spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s office. “And
that’s what rejected ballots can tell us.”

Of the 33,000 provisional ballots that were rejected in 2012, 38
percent were because the voter wasn’t registered in the state and 33
percent because the voter submitted a ballot in the wrong precinct.

Election officials said voters who weren’t registered might have
missed the state’s registration cut-off date, which was 29 days before
Election Day. Voters who register after that date are not eligible to
vote in that election.

“If someone thinks that they’re registered and isn’t, then that could
be an element of voter education that we need to improve,” Roberts
said.

Arizona Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, agrees that voter education
is an issue but thinks the 29-day cutoff for registration should be
changed.

“Let’s get rid of that deadline and have same-day registration,”
Gallardo said. “It’s ridiculous that such a large number of ballots are
being rejected, and then a large number of people are having their
rights taken away because they did not meet a 29-day cut off day.”

Voters who cast a ballot in the wrong precinct may have been confused
by redistricting, in which 2010 Census data was used to redraw
congressional and legislative voting districts in Arizona, election
officials said. Redistricting shifted voting precinct boundaries and, in
some places, reduced the number of precincts.

Roberts said this too comes back to voter education, adding that
there “is a degree of responsibility that voters have to understand
where their correct polling place is.”

Among the more than 12,000 rejected early voting ballots, which
include voters on the permanent early voting list, 42 percent were
rejected because the voter did not sign the ballot and 33 percent
because the voter missed the submission deadline.

Election officials said missing signatures and late ballot submissions also indicate inadequate education.

While Roberts said the Arizona Secretary of State’s office spent
nearly $600,000 in federal funds on voter education from the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA), he said there are still areas where the state
needs to better educate voters and election administrators.

The HAVA funding was used up in the last election cycle, Roberts
said, and the Secretary of State’s office is working to include
educational funding in the 2014 budget.

“The question we now have to be asking ourselves — and we have not
asked ourselves — is what are we doing to make sure that we have funding
there for voter education,” Gallardo said. “And I think that’s
something that needs to be addressed.”

Election reform efforts stir debate

The Arizona legislature has introduced dozens of election-related
bills this session in an effort to update, and in some cases reform, the
state’s election system. Proponents of the two most controversial
bills, which seek to clean up the permanent early voting list and limit
who and what organizations can collect and submit early voting ballots,
say the bills will increase efficiency and maintain the integrity of
early ballots.

Opponents say the bills will disenfranchise voters by making it more
difficult to vote and limiting efforts by advocacy groups to collect and
submit early ballots.

Both sides agree on one point: The number of rejected ballots,
combined with the reasons for rejection, document a disconnect between
voters and election administrators.

Senate Bill 1261,
sponsored by Arizona Sen. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, proposes to
clean up the state’s permanent early voting list (PEVL) by removing
voters who do not vote in four consecutive federal elections.

Arizona attracted national attention last November with its high
volume of provisional ballots, many of which were still being counted
two weeks after the election. Voters on the early voting list who show
up to vote in person instead must cast provisional ballots at the polls.

SB 1261 seeks to address why there were so many provisional ballots,
why so many people on the PEVL didn’t know they were on the list, and
getting those people off the list so they can vote the way they want to,
Reagan said.

If SB 1261 passes, election administrators would send a notice to
PEVL voters who did not vote in a primary or general election for two
consecutive federal election cycles, asking them if they want to stay on
the list. If a voter doesn’t respond within 30 days, he or she would be
removed from the PEVL but remain a registered voter. The bill would be
retroactive to include federal elections in 2010 and 2012.

Reagan has support from county recorders, the Secretary of State’s
office and fellow Republican legislators, who think the bill will make
the early voting system more efficient. But Latino advocacy groups and
some Democratic legislators see the bill as an attack on voters by
making it more difficult to vote.

“I don’t think that was her intent to try to suppress voters or put
obstacles in peoples’ way of voting, but I think her bills have the
unintended consequences of doing that,” said Gallardo. “There are so
many bills that at the end of the day, if you look at them, they all
make it more difficult for people to participate. It’s an attack. This
is a war on voters.”

Reducing the number of voters on the PEVL who haven’t used the system
would reduce administrative costs, said Maricopa County Assistant
Director of Elections Rey Valenzuela.

Maricopa County, for example, has more than 20,000 voters who didn’t
vote in the last four federal elections, he said. By removing them from
the PEVL, the county would save $2.12 per voter – or more than $42,000 –
by not having to send the mail-in forms.

Advocacy groups like Mi Familia Vota, which registered thousands of
first-time voters in Arizona, argue that the focus of legislation should
instead be placed on helping people vote.

“We believe the legislature and the counties need to invest more
resources into educating the voter,” said Raquel Terán, Arizona director
for Mi Familia Vota. “Purging the permanent early voting list, how does
that really help the participation? It doesn’t. It’s just making it
easier for the administration, not the voter.”

Senate Bill 1003
contains provisions that would prohibit paid or volunteer political
committee workers from submitting early ballots on behalf of voters. If
passed, violations of this provision would result in a class-six felony.
Arizona Sen. Michele Reagan also sponsored this bill.

The Arizona Secretary of State’s office said the early ballot system
was created so people could submit ballots through the U.S. Postal
Service. Spokesman Matt Roberts called it the “most secure” way to
submit early votes.

Daria Ovide, a Phoenix-based voting rights advocate and
communications director for Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy,
said this bill would limit voting options for groups of voters,
particularly Hispanics, who rely on organizations to help collect and
submit ballots.

Ovide helped register more than 34,000 new voters in Maricopa County
while working with Adiós Arpaio, a group comprised of the Campaign for
Arizona’s Future Political Action Committee and the Promise Arizona in
Action Political Committee.

Ovide said many of the voters her organization helped to register
rely on advocacy groups to not only help them understand the voting
process, but also to gather and submit ballots to elections officials.

“If we go away, that’s a significant loss,” Ovide said. “The reality
is that we have not had an actual conversation about what was the
problem in the election and what we’re going to do to fix it.”

Arizona’s election performance low

Arizona was listed in the bottom third of all U.S. states for election performance in 2008, according to the Elections Performance Index released in February by Pew Charitable Trusts.

The index gauges the efficiency of state-level election
administration based on a series of indicators, including the rate of
provisional and early voting ballots cast, rejection rates and voter
turnout, among others.

When compared to the rest of the nation, Arizona in 2008 had the
highest number of provisional ballots cast and the highest rejection
rate of such ballots as compared to total ballots cast. Nationwide data
is not yet available to compare the 2012 statistics.

Arizonans submitted in 2012 more than 183,000 provisional ballots, or
about 8 percent of all ballots cast. That’s up from 6.5 percent in 2008
and represents the highest number of provisional ballots ever cast here
for a federal election.

High numbers of provisional ballots can in part be explained,
according to election experts, by advocacy groups registering large
numbers of first-time voters, many of whom signed up for the permanent
early voting list, but later showed up at polling locations. Because
these voters were on the PEVL, they were required to cast a provisional
ballot.

The provisional ballot rejection rate among all ballots cast here was
1.4 percent in 2012, or more than 33,000 provisional ballots rejected
last year. That’s down from 1.9 percent in 2008.

“We don’t really know what’s good or what’s not, honestly,” Greene
said. “All we do know is that there are states that tend to be at the
top of that, and Arizona is one of them.”

Tammy Patrick, federal compliance officer for the Maricopa County
Elections Department, said Pew’s Elections Performance Index shows that
states in the Western United States tend to have higher rejection rates
because people have more options on how to vote.

But, she said, that doesn’t make high rates of rejected ballots acceptable.

“I don’t think that any rejection rate is acceptable by the public, by the voters or by election administrators,” Patrick said.

Rejection rates vary by type of ballots, reasons for rejection

Maricopa County, which included 60 percent of all ballots cast in
Arizona’s 2012 election, had lower rates of rejected ballots when
compared to 2008.

Patrick and Assistant Deputy Elections Director Rey Valenzuela point
to an information campaign to educate voters on new precinct boundaries
from redistricting. Valenzuela said the county mailed more than 2
million notices to voters about new precincts and polling locations.

“We were expecting a low rejection rate just because of that mass
mailing,” he said. The county’s provisional ballot rejection rate, as a
percent of total ballots cast, decreased from 2.1 percent in 2008 to 1.6
percent in 2012.

Apache, Navajo and Coconino Counties experienced the highest rate of
rejected provisional ballots in the state. The rejection rates were 2.7
for Apache County and 2.3 percent for Navajo and Coconino Counties. The
most common reasons for rejection were because voters weren’t registered
or voted in the wrong precinct.

Geneva L. Honea, voter registration supervisor in Apache County, says
confusion among the large population of “snowbirds” – residents who
live in her county for part of the year – helped raise its high
rejection rate for provisional ballots.

“A lot of voters don’t know that ballots are unforwardable, or that any election form is unforwardable,” Honea said.

The county also has a high number of voters from the Navajo Nation,
she said, which holds tribal elections on the same day as U.S. federal
elections.

Voting places for tribal elections are different from the voter’s
federal election polling place, officials said. For tribal elections,
voters are required to vote where their umbilical cord was buried. This
could be at any one of the 110 Chapters, or tribal polling places,
across the Navajo Nation. In federal elections, those same voters are
required to vote at polling locations based on their home address.

“We have our outreach worker out there trying to let them know this
but there’s still a lot of people that don’t get it,” Honea said. “ They
don’t realize that (the federal ballot) has to go to the location of
your home.”

Navajo and Coconino counties also have high numbers of Navajo Nation
residents and confusion among voters about where to cast a ballot,
election officials said.

“That’s the biggest problem we have,” said Edison J. Wauneka,
executive director of the Navajo Election Administration. “We need to
educate our people traditionally – and what the process is as far as
counties and states are concerned. We just really need to coordinate our
efforts to do more with (the counties).”

Laurie Justman, Navajo County recorder, said despite education
efforts throughout the county, registration issues are a big part of
rejected provisional ballots there.

“A lot of the people that live on the Navajo reservation think that
if they’re registered for the tribal election that they are registered
for the federal election as well,” Justman said. “It’s two separate
registrations.”

In Yuma County, however, rejected ballots are more common among early
votes, which accounted for 73 percent of all ballots cast there in
2012. The rejection rate of these ballots was a little more than 2
percent, the highest rejection rate among early ballots in the state.

Yuma County election officials say they are aware of the high rejection rate and are working on a campaign to address it.

“I think they are individual issues and I definitely feel like we
have to do the outreach and do the education so we can tackle some of
the challenges,” said Yuma County Recorder Robyn Stallworth Pouquette.
“I think across the board our county has some pretty aggressive goals in
reaching out to voters so they know what the process is and what’s
required.”

With more than half of its electorate using early voting instead of
in-person polling sites, Yuma County changed from precinct polling
locations to “vote centers” in 2012. Voters from any precinct can vote
at any one of the county’s 11 vote centers, regardless of their precinct
boundaries.

Yavapai County also has high numbers of early voters, about 72
percent, and uses vote centers. But Yavapai County’s rejection rate of
early ballots, as a percentage of all ballots cast, was just 0.5
percent.

Sue Reynolds, Yuma County elections director, believes the high
rejection rates are largely due to voter education, and the fact that
third-party groups signed voters up for the PEVL without explaining
exactly what that means. She said large numbers of those voters later
showed up to vote in person.

Educating voters, election officials key to improving Az’s elections

At a state level, election officials agree that better education will
help address high rates of rejected ballots. But how that argument is
framed – and where the education occurs – is a matter of perspective.

“There’s a lot of education that goes into voting, but at the end of
the day, people have to want to be a part of the system,” Arizona Sen.
Michele Reagan said. “You can only do so much and so we identified what
were the biggest problems that we wanted to fix and these (bills) are
the ideas that came forward.”

“There’s certain underlying assumptions that I think may be
incorrect,” Ovide said. “That the large number of provisional ballots
and large numbers of confused PEVL voters are for reasons that are the
voter’s fault. In cases where the system breaks down, where do you
presume the error has occurred?”

“We’ve identified that voter education certainly is something that
we’re going to re-emphasize in the next election cycle,” said Matt
Roberts, the Arizona Secretary of State spokesman. He said his office
expects rejection rates to decrease in 2014.

“There’s no exact answer that’s going to solve all of it,” said
Maricopa County’s Tammy Patrick. “But if we can try and make sure that
whatever changes we are seeking to make, that they address the problem
at hand, and that they’re not going to create more problems.”

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